All posts tagged: startup

A startup, Everand, is now bundling ebooks, audiobooks, and book clubs in challenge to Amazon

A startup, Everand, is now bundling ebooks, audiobooks, and book clubs in challenge to Amazon

Published by skeptic

Audiobook, ebook, or both? Now, you won’t have to choose. The Scribd-owned reading subscription service Everand wants to make the choice unnecessary. On Tuesday, the company took the wraps off a combined subscription that brings together Everand’s catalog of over 1.5 million audiobooks and ebooks with the social book club app Fable, which Everand acquired in 2025, into a single plan, directly challenging Amazon’s dominance in digital reading. The new subscription is available to two apps’ 5 million combined readers and provides access to that over 1.5 million title library of audiobooks and ebooks, plus Fable’s nearly 200,000 online book clubs. As you read or listen in one app, that activity is synced to the other. Image Credits:Everand The entry-level plan offers one book for $11.99 per month in the U.S., while a $16.99 per month plan offers three books, and a $28.99 per month plan lets you dive into five. Because the subscription covers both ebooks and audiobooks, that’s a fairly competitive deal compared with Audible Premium Plus ($14.95/month), which offers one credit for …

From the stage to the future: Where are Startup Battlefield’s alumni now?

From the stage to the future: Where are Startup Battlefield’s alumni now?

Published by skeptic

Some of the most consequential companies in tech history didn’t launch with a splashy fundraising announcement. They started with a pitch. Dropbox demoed to a room of skeptics. Cloudflare took the stage before most people understood what edge networking meant. Discord was a scrappy game developer called Hammer & Chisel. Mint, Trello, Forethought, N26 — all of them passed through the same crucible: TechCrunch Startup Battlefield. That’s not a coincidence. Battlefield isn’t just a competition. It’s a launchpad, and the numbers back it up. More than 1,700 companies have competed on the Battlefield stage. Together, they’ve raised $32 billion in total funding and generated over 250 exits — including acquisitions by Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Salesforce, Twitter, Uber, and Amazon. The Startup Battlefield network runs so deep that alumni have even acquired each other: Dropbox acquired fellow Startup Battlefield alum DocSend in 2021. For thousands of founders, it’s become a defining milestone — not just a pitch competition, but the moment the world started paying attention. And you actually still have a chance to join that …

Unastella, a South Korean rocket startup that launched from home, raises M

Unastella, a South Korean rocket startup that launched from home, raises $24M

Published by skeptic

As SpaceX counts down to what could be the largest IPO in history, the race to build the next generation of launch vehicles is heating up. Asia wants in. Startups across Australia, India, Japan, and South Korea are racing to establish themselves in a market long dominated by the U.S. and China. One of them is Unastella, a four-year-old South Korean startup that just closed a $24 million Series B, bringing its total funding to $44 million. The company launched its own rocket, the Una Express-I, from South Korean soil in May 2025. The Seoul-based rocket startup is developing its own launch vehicles and engines, with an initial focus on small satellite launch services. Unastella’s near-term focus is validating its technology and business model through orbital launches, with crewed suborbital spaceflight as a longer-term goal, founder and CEO Jae Park told TechCrunch. Unastella uses a kerosene and liquid oxygen propulsion system, one of the most proven combinations in rocket history, and one that is also used by SpaceX’s Falcon series. On top of that, the …

‘This is fine’ artist KC Green reaches agreement with AI startup Artisan

‘This is fine’ artist KC Green reaches agreement with AI startup Artisan

Published by skeptic

After criticizing a startup called Artisan for misusing his work, artist KC Green — creator of the famous “This is fine” meme — said he’s reached an agreement with Artisan.  The dispute arose after the startup appeared to use a version of Green’s art to promote its AI assistant Ava. In Artisan’s bus and subway ads, Green’s recognizable dog sat amid recognizable flames, but instead of saying “This is fine,” it declared, “My pipeline is on fire,” while the ad urged people to “Hire Ava the AI BDR.” Earlier this month, Green posted on social media that his art had been “stolen like AI steals” and urged his followers to “vandalize” the ads if they saw them. He also told TechCrunch he was frustrated about having to “try my hand at the American court system” instead of putting that time into his comics. Artisan, meanwhile, told us it has “a lot of respect for Green and his work.” Then, earlier this week, founder and CEO Jaspar Carmichael-Jack said the two sides had come to an …

How to apply to Startup Battlefield 2026, what you need ahead of the June 8 deadline

How to apply to Startup Battlefield 2026, what you need ahead of the June 8 deadline

Published by skeptic

Every year I read through thousands of Startup Battlefield applications. And every year, I see the same pattern: The founders who belong on this stage are often the ones who almost didn’t apply. They think they’re too early. They think they need more traction. They think the program is for companies further along than they are. So here’s what we’re actually looking for and how to make sure your application reflects it. The deadline to be considered was May 27, but with the competition heating up and the applications continuing to come in, we’ve extended it to June 8. You still can apply here, but time is still running out! And if you’re not up to speed on this year’s Startup Battlefield details, it’s once again a premiere part of TechCrunch Disrupt, which will be in San Francisco from October 13-15 and concludes with the crowning of this year’s future champion. And that list of champions includes some incredible companies, from giants like Cloudflare and Discord, to the most recent crop of winners, who you …

The Billion Chinese Startup Trying to Build Hands for Every Robot

The $6 Billion Chinese Startup Trying to Build Hands for Every Robot

Published by skeptic

If you could buy a humanoid robot for less than a smartphone, would you? Would you buy several robots to handle cooking, cleaning, babysitting, and even your job? This is the pitch being made by Zhou Yong, the 40-year-old founder and chief technology officer of LinkerBot, one of China’s leading manufacturers of dexterous humanoid hands. The startup’s hardware comes complete with five fingers and at least 11 joints and is sold for as little as $600 in China. LinkerBot’s hands can play piano, thread needles, tighten screws, and assemble electronics. In three to five years, Zhou predicts, the price for one will fall to just $200. Eventually, “everyone will own ten robots on average,” Zhou said in an exclusive interview with WIRED. Marketing spectacles like the humanoid robot marathon in Beijing have drawn attention to robots’ legs, but the real frontier in humanoids is hands. “The hands are the majority of the engineering difficulty of the entire robot,” Elon Musk said at an event last fall. Founded in 2023, LinkerBot has quickly emerged as a …

Startup Battlefield 200 applications close today

Startup Battlefield 200 applications close today

Published by skeptic

Today is the final day to apply or nominate a startup for Startup Battlefield 200. Once the clock strikes 11:59 p.m. PT, the window closes on your chance to compete for $100,000 in equity-free funding, gain global visibility, connect directly with investors, and launch on the TechCrunch Disrupt stage. If you’re building a breakout startup — or know a founder who is — this is the moment to move. Apply now for the opportunity to join 200 of the world’s most promising early-stage startups at TechCrunch Disrupt. Image Credits:Kimberly White / Getty Images Last call for ambitious founders Founders, this is it. The application window closes tonight. The strongest startups are already in the arena, and applications always surge in the final hours. If your company has been nominated but you haven’t completed your application yet, don’t risk missing your shot by waiting until the last minute. And if you know a startup that deserves investor attention, media exposure, and a global stage, nominate them now while there’s still time to apply before the deadline. Breakout startups started with small moments Some of the most influential companies in …

Former Google and Apple Researchers Launch a Startup to Build AI’s Missing Feedback Loop

Former Google and Apple Researchers Launch a Startup to Build AI’s Missing Feedback Loop

Published by skeptic

A group of AI researchers who previously worked at Google DeepMind, Apple, OpenAI, and Meta Superintelligence Labs announced on Wednesday they’re launching a new startup called Trajectory, which aims to help companies regularly improve their AI products by training on real-world user interactions. Trajectory wants to build a platform for AI that can learn continuously, a capability that researchers have long held up as a major barrier to further AI progress. OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic have found success training increasingly capable versions of AI models, especially for domains such as coding, math, and science. However, these systems stop getting smarter after their training is done. While there have been some recent breakthroughs in continual learning, tech companies have generally struggled to make AI products that learn from their errors in real time. In December 2025 at NeurIPS, one of the largest annual AI research conferences, Turing award winner Richard Sutton argued that continual learning is essential for building superintelligent agents. Trajectory has raised a $15 million seed round at a $115 million post-money valuation, led …

How to apply to Startup Battlefield 2026, what you need ahead of the June 8 deadline

What we’re looking for in Startup Battlefield 2026, and how to apply in time for the May 27 deadline

Published by skeptic

Every year I read through thousands of Startup Battlefield applications. And every year, I see the same pattern: The founders who belong on this stage are often the ones who almost didn’t apply. They think they’re too early. They think they need more traction. They think the program is for companies further along than they are. So here’s what we’re actually looking for and how to make sure your application reflects it. The deadline to be considered is May 27, which is tomorrow — time is running out for you to apply right here! And if you’re not up to speed on this year’s Startup Battlefield details, it’s once again a premiere part of TechCrunch Disrupt, which will be in San Francisco from October 13-15 and concludes with the crowning of this year’s future champion. And that list of champions includes some incredible companies, from giants like Cloudflare and Discord, to the most recent crop of winners, who you can learn about in detail right here. What gets a company selected for Startup Battlefield Startup Battlefield …

This startup is betting India’s gig economy can train the world’s robots

This startup is betting India’s gig economy can train the world’s robots

Published by skeptic

In the last few years, India’s online food delivery market has grown significantly, with both Zomato and Swiggy going public and an increase in the number of cloud kitchens. Meanwhile, startups working on home services, such as on-demand household staffing platforms like Urban Company, Snabbit, and Pronto, have gained popularity. Silicon Valley-based start-up Human Archive is tapping into this trend, partnering with these companies to have workers wear special caps with cameras to collect egocentric (first-person point of view) video data of everyday tasks that could be used to train robots. Without naming specific partners, the startup said it is working with companies in the home services, hostel, and restaurant sectors to collect egocentric data, and it says it has more than 1,000 active headsets deployed across multiple locations. On the back of that traction, Human Archive said Tuesday it has raised $8.2 million in funding from Wing Venture Capital, NVP Capital, Y Combinator, and angels from OpenAI, Nvidia, Google, Mercor, AfterQuery, BAIR, SAIL, Brad Boa, and Meta. The startup was founded by two Berkeley …